This is a simple critique of a recent news article. I take as my starting point the following piece published in The Nation on the proposal made by the Progressive Democratic Caucus for reform in the United States, directed at the Congressional “Super-committee” charged with developing a plan to deal with the economic crisis:

There are many flaws. But this stuck out to me: “If corporations can join together to hire an army of lobbyists, working Americans must come together and use their strength in numbers to protect the rights of middle class Americans.”

The point isn’t to let average Americans’ voices be heard. They’ve already made that happen, by staging massive, visible, undeniable demonstrations. Their voice is out there. Encouraging them to group together is a sham. It’s a way to placate the masses so they’ll think that real change is on the way. The people don’t need the progressives to help them organize. They’re already saying what they want. It’s up to politicians to listen and to act. And the way the Caucus wants to act is wrong.

That’s because the point isn’t to give people what corporations have. It’s to eliminate what corporations have, to eliminate corporate influence in politics. We have to make it impossible for people to build huge corporations that make ‘efficiency’ job cuts through layoffs and concentrate wealth in an extremely narrow minority. That is what a free market allows people to do. It allows them the liberty to enslave others. It allows them to amass huge sums by exploiting others and reducing them to poverty. And then it lets them invest that money and make things better for themselves and worse for others, and worse for the government. And then, once all that is taken care of, the same capitalists have the financial power to sway everything in their favor, whether government programs, educational curricula – everything. It’s a vicious cycle of profit and propaganda.

And reforms tend to keep this system in tact. They keep power in the hands of corporations. And the leaders of corporations have every incentive to break the rules, or to use loopholes, to make more money. They’ll find a way to make profit, despite the government. If we enact what this Caucus suggests, then we will see ourselves in the same place we’re in now 10 years down the road. The key is to stop the corporatization of our public and private lives.

Many have said that free markets create jobs and that free markets = free societies. These same people obviously haven’t considered the fact that, with free reign to do what they will, people who make money will continue to amass huge fortunes, consolidate their wealth and their companies, fire good workers, etc., all so they can make more profit and buy more things to suit their desires (or, what’s worse, they become philanthropists, perpetuating the system that rewarded them so well).

People need the freedom to do the work they want, but they should not be allowed to agglomerate their work into massive corporations that make true politics impossible. Republicans like to say that entrepreneurship is a foundational American principle and value, and yet these same politicians support policies that make it nearly impossible for average Americans to become entrepreneurs. That is, they support economic tyranny, the subordination of the many to the few; they support unbridled capitalism. Without regulation, capitalism can’t offer enough of its own safety nets to make sure people can actually succeed in starting their own companies. Government is the only one that can establish “rules of the game.” People can’t be happy and begin doing the work they want, coming together around a common goal, creating small start-ups with others, if there isn’t regulation to stop massive corporations from squashing those goals.

Neoconservatism and neoliberalism don’t support a free society. They support corruption and greed. These ideologies are horrifying diseases, cancers affecting all facets of society. They are riddled with contradictions, and they have to go!